Mitt Romney’s big convention night careened from the sweet to the surreal. Heart-warming testimonials about his past good works and business successes gave way to an strangely riveting monologue between Clint Eastwood and an empty chair.

In a half-grumbled and apparently entirely ad-libbed performance, Eastwood criticized President Barack Obama, declaring it was time “for someone else to come along and solve the problem.” Not all of Hollywood is “left of Lenin,” said Eastwood, who recalled the night Barack Obama was elected president:

“Everybody is crying, Oprah was crying. I was even crying. And then finally—and I haven’t cried that hard since I found out that there is 23 million unemployed people in this country. Now that is something to cry for because that is a disgrace, a national disgrace, and we haven’t done enough, obviously – this administration hasn’t done enough to cure that.”

The speech drew loud laughter in the convention hall and launched a new meme on the Internet (see #eastwooding) but it was was also a jarring distraction from Romney’s best opportunity to introduce himself to the country.

The otherwise precisely choreographed evening was full of testimonials from people whose lives Romney had touched through his leadership within the Mormon church. One mother in his congregation described how the Romney’s family cared for her son while she stayed with her premature baby at the hospital. One couple spoke of Romney’s personal involvement with their 14-year-old son who was dying of cancer, even honouring his request to help him write his will:

So, after David’s death, we were able to give his skateboard, his model rockets, and his fishing gear to his best friends. He also made it clear that his brother, Peter, should get his Ruger 22 rifle. How many men do you know would take the time out of their busy lives to visit a terminally ill 14 year old and help him settle his affairs? David also helped us plan his funeral. He wanted to be buried in his Boy Scout uniform. He wanted Mitt to pronounce his eulogy. Mitt was there to honor that request. We will be ever grateful to Mitt for his love and concern.

Later, a parade of Olympians testified to Romney’s management skills at the Salt Lake City Games, and businessmen talked about his success.

When Romney took to the stage, he spoke touchingly about his parents, wife, and kids.

Mom and Dad were married 64 years. And if you wondered what their secret was, you could have asked the local florist – because every day Dad gave Mom a rose, which he put on her bedside table. That’s how she found out what happened on the day my father died – she went looking for him because that morning, there was no rose.

Hope and Change had a powerful appeal. But tonight I’d ask a simple question: If you felt that excitement when you voted for Barack Obama, shouldn’t you feel that way now that he’s President Obama? You know there’s something wrong with the kind of job he’s done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him.

One memorable line of the speech was this one, delivered in a mocking tone:

President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. MY promise…is to help you and your family.

But the moment in his speech where Romney seemed to come to life, almost bursting to get the words out, came when he defended his business record from Democratic attacks:

In America, we celebrate success, we don’t apologize for it. We weren’t always successful at Bain. But no one ever is in the real world of business. That’s what this President doesn’t seem to understand. Business and growing jobs is about taking risk, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, but always striving. It is about dreams. Usually, it doesn’t work out exactly as you might have imagined. Steve Jobs was fired at Apple. He came back and changed the world.

Romney may not have delivered history’s most eloquent or passionate speech, but he did manage to define and explain himself on his own terms — and to break out from the defensive position where the Obama campaign has kept him most of the summer. As he and his running mate hit the campaign trail in Florida and Ohio on Friday, they must be hoping that voters who tuned in Thursday night to get a sense of the man will remember more from Tampa than Clint Eastwood and the empty chair.

Mitt Romney in his own terms

I am totally awed by the incredible stupidity of many
working class Americans who appear to be sucked in by the GOP and the way that
party raves on about President Obama’s inability in getting the economy back in
gear after the melt down in 2008. The
causes for the economic collapse were begun under Reagan, with his policies of
deregulating Wall Street, and continued under a string of Republican presidents
from 1989, except for two terms with a Democrat, Clinton, who did nothing to
address the problems, until 2009. Obama
inherited a country on the verge of insolvency, with a calamitous debt, two
ongoing wars and a mortgage debacle setting in motion the collapse of a good
number Western world’s economies. While
one, having lived in the US, understands the insularity of that country, and
the common perception of the population that the rest of the world is of little
importance or consequence to the US, the lack of markets for American goods and
services, due to crashed Western economies, makes economic recovery
difficult.

Of course the Republicans claim to have answers to the
problems, and assure the public that they will put Americans back to work,
which seems only fair since they are the ones who created the situations that
put them out of work in the first place.
Maybe the will borrow billions of dollars to begin much needed
infrastructure work throughout the US, largely in GOP held States of
course. After all, the current interest
payments on loans from China account for nearly 40% of the Chinese annual
defense budget, might as well go for 50%, maybe more, what the heck.

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